Living On Purpose and Synchronicities

Synchronicities can feel like magical gifts: you think of a friend and then they call or text you...you cross the path of a stranger in a grocery story and it turns out they work in a company you've been wanting to network your way into...you attend an event and it turns out the person sitting next to you turns out to be someone who knows a friend of yours that you haven't seen in a long timed and wanted to reconnect with...

Synchronicities could be called "being in the right place at the right time." And they can also be taken as demonstrations that everything in life is interconnected. There really are six degrees of separation, or perhaps fewer. And when we focus on something that really matters, even if it is subconsciously, life moves to support what really matters in its own timeframe.

Some people consider them random and call them "coincidences." But I have found that they are not quite as random as we might think if we find ourselves connected to a thread of purpose driving our lives. As we grow a connection to our spiritual core--becoming clearer and clearer who we are at a very fundamental level, what really matters, and what living from what really matters means, our lives become more purpose driven. And the thread of personal purpose directs us to take actions that align with our spiritual core. These actions lead to meeting people, being in places and having experiences that are more likely to help us live into what really matters, what we feel in our hearts, and ways we want to bring deeper meaning and service into our lives.

I remember a refrigerator quote when I was in my 20's from Goethe whose message was that if you act from a place of purpose or divine guidance, life will move with you and support you. When you think about it, if you are trying to live a meaningful, spiritually driven, grounded life, and you are trying to make a positive difference through your words and actions, why wouldn't life support you?

Life will throw us all curveballs along the way. No one is imagine from difficult times or challenges. And enough trauma or big enough trauma can certainly feel spiritually crushing, and may be truly isolating to the point we question is we still have a spiritual foundation. But often the spiritual core of our human beingness is still deep enough and strong enough to help us prevail.

I think of the boys' soccer team that got trapped in the cave in Thailand a year or two back. The boys' coach had a very strong spiritual core and engaged in a meditation practice. By sharing this meditation practice and his spiritual strength with the boys, together, they managed to survive grueling conditions. And miraculously, the team of divers that braved life threatening conditions to find them, DID find them. And all of the boys and their coach were successfully rescued in a miraculous way. When the news of the rescue was in the news, I was not at all surprised.

Even when David Ortiz was shot, something I have written about both in words and in music, I had a feeling that there would be divine intervention to help him stay alive. David has an extraordinarily deep and big heart. And he is someone who has also struck me as a deeply spiritual human being. That a man near him in the nightclub has been shot himself, and recognized the urgency of getting David to a medical clinic within minutes of the shooting was an incredibly synchronicity. It saved his life.

The song "From A Distance," talks about God watching us and looking out for us, which may be harder to relate to for people who do not consider themselves religious. Yet, whether religious or not, when one goes deeper, it is hard NOT to notice or crave a connection with some sort of spiritual life force. Having a purposeful life is important to many if not most people, because purpose gives life meaning. Living a meaningful life brings happiness. Lack of meaning eats at the spirit and at our healthy.

Whatever our method and whatever our journey, as a sense of personal purpose gets clearer, it is easier to believe that God is watching us and choreographing much of what will unfold in our lives. And call it universal energy if you like, but this kind of spiritual dimension is at the heart of synchronicities. When I find myself having a series of synchronicities, including in unexpected places and ways, I take it as a sign that I am moving in the right direction.

At The Root Of What Matters

English is an interesting language, in which some words have double entendres which are actually inter-related. For example, my colleague Aron Gersh wrote about, when we say "I feel deeply touched inside," the word touched has both an emotional and physical meaning. It may be the way you touch me "outside" on my skin, that reaches my heart, creating a feeling of being emotionally touched. Or if you touch me emotionally, I may be more open to letting you touch me "physically."

The word "matter" is another one of those words. When we say something "matters" to us, we are talking about an emotional meaning. What "matters" is important to us, and occupies space in the heart. And "matter" is also a term relating to objects or forms we find in the physical world. We make jokes about the brain as "gray matter." Or we can look at physical substances through the eyes of a physicist (who will focus on how matter occupies space and possesses mass as distinct from energy).

And to further this line of inquiry, the relationship between what emotionally matters and physical matter is actually quite significant too: what matters to us informs where we need to direct our energy in an actionable way to create what we want in our lives. This includes forms of matter, like house, or cars, or people we want to meet. Bottom line: what matters to us really matters.

When we direct our energy without considering what really matters, we can be creative. But we may not be happy with what we end up creating. Learning how to identify what really matters, and let ourselves accept or embrace what really matters is often an introspective journey which requires guidance and work. Learning what really matters requires learning to listen to the heart, and identify the heart's priorities and values. When we direct our energy in alignment with your heart's priorities and values, we are able to manifest things that we really care about.

When we create things we really care about, we feel our efforts are purposeful and the results are more likely to make us happy. We can create from the soul level up, from the inside out. We create things that fit and resonate and feel right. When we create what we think we "should" create or feel pressured to create by outside forces without consideration for whether it really fits our inner priorities and values, we are more likely to feel stress and pressure, rather than flow and happiness.

The heart has the strongest electromagnetic field in the body, so harnessing this energy and directing it towards a goal that matters, feels powerful and often leaves us feeling empowered. What we create may also benefit other people, and leave them feeling empowered as well.

When we get to "the heart of the matter," we are also getting to the root of what matters. This root anchors our actions. And our actions are anchored in the heart. In essence we become practical physicists, translating energy into matter through our actions. This is where science and spirituality meet, and vision and reality can meet. This is where life can feel magical and fun as well as meaningful and significant.

Being able to get to the heart of the matter, to really know what matters and to take action based on what really matters creates more of what really matters in both our emotional and physical world.